The sentencing of Kosovo’s former president to 25 years for war crimes is a rare moment when the machinery of international justice actually reaches those who once held power. The case, heard at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, involved charges of murder, persecution, and other grave offences linked to the late-1990s conflict. Whatever one’s view of the tribunal’s legitimacy, the verdict represents a meaningful step: it says that even architects of a nation’s founding struggle are not above the law. For many in the Western Balkans, where impunity has long been the norm, that message matters.
Yet the response in the region has been predictably divided. Supporters of the former president frame the sentence as a politically motivated attack on Kosovo’s independence, while victims’ families see it as a long-delayed reckoning. Both reactions can be true simultaneously. What is harder to dispute is the principle that accountability applies to everyone — a principle that cuts against the selective outrage we often see when similar allegations surface closer to home. The same people who celebrate this verdict may be silent when their own allies face scrutiny.
This is where today’s Quranic reminder — “They know whatever you do” (Surah Al-Infitar, 82:12) — offers a fitting moral lens. The verse reminds us that nothing escapes record, not the quiet injustice nor the public atrocity. It does not distinguish between friend and foe, or between a war crime committed abroad and a quiet hypocrisy practised in a parliamentary office. The standard is absolute. For those who demand accountability for others, the verse asks an uncomfortable question: are you prepared for the same standard to apply to you?
That question resonates beyond the Balkans. In the UK, the recent ITV exposé on Reform UK revealed a party that publicly condemns so-called “hate preachers” while apparently tolerating activists and councillors who spread far-right rhetoric. As Owen Jones writes in The Guardian, the selective targeting of Muslims while ignoring extremism from within is a stinking hypocrisy. The Islamic ethical principle here is clear: “Do not harm and do not reciprocate harm”. Accountability must be consistent, or it becomes merely another tool of power.
The reminder of 82:12 is not meant to shame but to sober. It invites every person — in power or out of it — to pause and ask: if my actions were known to all, would I still stand by them? The answer, for most of us, is humbling. That humility is the foundation of any genuine justice system, whether in The Hague or Westminster.